ADHD from A to Zoe

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Baking with Zoë (and ADHD)

By Zoë Kessler, BA, B.Ed.

Today is the first day of the Chinese New Year. It’s the year of the Dragon.  I thought I’d celebrate by starting off with some fresh-baked peanut butter cookies for breakfast.

The Dragon made me do it…

Confession: that’s not exactly how I planned it; cookies for breakfast on Chinese New Year was serendipity, of sorts. I’d planned to make them yesterday, as a way to take a break from my work.

As a little girl, peanut butter cookies were my favorite. How hard could it be? I thought. I found a website called Simply Recipes which I mistakenly read as, “simple” recipes. With only nine ingredients, and three – 3! – steps, I thought even I could handle this cookie-making thing. Goes to show how wrong you can be.

6 Comments to
Baking with Zoë (and ADHD)

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  • I love peanut butter cookies! They are my favorite! I work at a bank in a small town and from time to time customers bring us lunch or goodies. We also set out snacks every quarter for our Customer Appreciation Day. Trays of assorted cookies are very popular. The best thing about the cookie tray is that amid all of the quadruple chocolate chunk and piles-o-candy cookies everyone leaves the peanut butter ones alone. Yay, more for me!!!

    By the way, my son Drew said to tell you that you can even make baking cookies sound interesting. Fun post.

    Brandy@ADHD: My Son and Me

    • Hi Brandy.
      Aww, you guys are too sweet! Thanks for sharing your story, and say thanks to Drew for me. I’m glad he (and you) liked my post.
      Take care!
      Z.

  • One more time, of many more times to come, I’m sure, thank you, Zoe. Just a few days ago, I ruined a batch of simple, four ingredient sugar cookies. I’m still engaged in the futile exercise of trying to figure out what I did wrong. I’d laid out each and every utensil and ingredient before hand; posted the recipe on the fridge with a magnet at eye level. The blasted dough wouldn’t set up. I mixed, and mixed, and mixed until I finally decided to pour it into the pan, bake it in a flat sheet and break it up afterwards for eating. Ha! The top was crispy, the bottom gooey and stuck to the pan. Flour and water do make glue. It took three days of soaking to get it off the pan which I was tempted to just chuck, but pans are expensive these days. There are still spots on the pan that look like they may become a permanent part of the pan’s surface. I’ll work on those again later. What I started out to comment on is that you addressed two of the most frustrating things in my life; that of having to do 50 things first to get to the one thing I started out to do, although I usually abandon the project at 25 and toss it into the “do later someday” pile, and having followed instructions carefully, I still mess up. I’ve been feeling really bad about myself, and your article helped me tremendously.

    • Susan,
      Thanks for sharing your story.

      Please, don’t ever feel badly about yourself over stuff like this – they’re only cookies!! Besides, if you did your best, that’s all you can do.
      As you saw from my post, I really do always try to laugh, if not in the moment, then at least within 24 hours of messing something up royally. I try to apply that rule across the board, no matter what. And I always try to do my best. There’s really nothing more you can do.

      Oh – except keep improving on your “best” and figuring out what’s important and what’s not. You know what? Baking excellent cookies is DEFINITELY not a priority for me! I happen to have a non-ADHD girlfriend who can out-bake the best of ‘em! Why don’t you find one of them? I tell ya, it solves my baking dilemma.

      Take care,
      be gentle with yourself,
      and thanks for having a sense of humour.
      Z.

  • LOL … well it wasn’t cookies, it was my hair. (I’m in the gray hair witness protection program) Not quite baking but still what is normally a simple pour bottle A into bottle B – set timer – rinse – condition – and perfection!
    Uh … nope! Friday afternoon I don’t know what happened, but that simple process that normal that normally takes about an hour went horribly wrong … and required a 911 call to my stepsister, and a 7 hour and 4 process procedure to fix. I will say I’ve done worse to my hair in my life, but its been a looonnnnnngggg time. Turns out when I grabbed my “usual” box of color, I actually grabbed the box out of the slot beside it and didn’t notice. Sigh

    • Hey, Suzzy!
      Send photos!
      ha ha…sorry, I couldn’t resist.
      And you’re right: this blog post could have been about practically anything, when you think about it. *sigh*
      I mean, ha ha ha…
      We MUST keep laughing!
      Hope you are.
      Take care,
      and be careful!
      Z.

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